THE MAN WHO CAN - Melvyn Benn

How do you become the person who organises the Carling Weekend Reading Festival?

Melvyn Benn, managing director of festival

promoter Mean Fiddler popped down for a talk at The Museum of Reading and revealed all. He also kindly left behind some weekend tickets for an Evening Post competition.

Linda Serck got the lowdown

WHEN Mean Fiddler boss Melvyn Benn first came to the Carling Weekend: Reading Festival at 16, he hitchhiked from Yorkshire and slept rolled up in plastic when it rained.

"I thought, ‘what do I need a tent for?'" the now 46-year-old said. He watched The Faces, ELO and Status Quo perform in that carefree summer of 1972.

Little did he know then that he himself would be responsible for organising the festival in later years.

Unusually, the mild-mannered promoter's favourite band are the vitriolic left-wing extremists Rage Against the Machine. And the father-of-one's choice actually harks back to his own politically active time in the 70s.

And it was those heady days that became the springboard for his successful career in festivals.

After leaving school at 15, he developed "strong left-wing nterests" and in 1975 at the age of 19 headed for London in 1975.

Mr Ben said: "Then 1979 and Margaret Thatcher came along, which dealt a very significant blow to my revolutionary thoughts.

"My response was to organise a festival in a lorry on Clapham Common to demonstrate and

confirm our dislike of Thatcher."

Afterwards he began organising community festivals, supported by trade unions and the GLC.

With this experience under his belt, he set up the Workers Beer Company that soon became the leading beer distributor at estivals around the country, including Glastonbury.

From there he and business artner Vince Power negotiated a 50 per cent stake in setting up the Reading Festival with the then organisers, Harold Pembleton and partners.

The festival had flagging sales for a number of years.

"But we turned the sales around straight away," Mr Benn beamed.

But then the smooth road to uccess reached a dead end.

He said: "At the end of '91 we started booking the festival for 1992, but were told abruptly that our contract had run out and that we were no longer part of the estival. It was like ‘now you've served your time, the festival is prosperous now, good bye'."

They booked the line-up for 1992, including a memorable last erformance by Nirvana, but then they were out. The determined duo went on to launch the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon, but always had their eye on the Reading Festival site.

They bought it in 1993. Mr Benn said: "We anaged to evict the people who had previously evicted us."

However the then deputy leader of Reading Borough Council, a ertain Martin Salter, now MP for Reading West, stuck his boot in.

Mr Benn said: "I'm very good friends with Martin now but at the time he explained to me in orthright terms that over his dead body would Vince and I ever stage the Reading Festival."

But they had bought the land with the vital road access from Richfield Avenue, so eventually the dispute was resolved.

And the rest is history as they say. As well as having 15 bars and clubs, Mean Fiddler has now become the largest festival romoter anywhere in the world.